


the heat's about to break

by torrentialTriages



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: (as much as anything i write can be a slow burn), M/M, Slow Burn, au - maelgwyn dies but then he gets better, what's better than this narrative foils talking about their trauma together
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:22:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22413934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torrentialTriages/pseuds/torrentialTriages
Summary: The past catches up with Ephrim eventually.Ephrim, Maelgwyn, and this thing they've built together in the parallels they run.
Relationships: Ephrim/Maelgwyn (Friends at the Table)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8
Collections: Secret Samol 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oziads](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oziads/gifts).



> hello......... fesha enjoy entertainment...... this is my most ambitious project in a While so im sorry in advance about any delays that might come in updating since school is also kicking my ass rn but also mama didn't raise no quitter,

The past catches up with Ephrim eventually.

He’s been bracing for years for some kind of resurgence, but as time has progressed the wariness has worn off. Who can blame him? He’s busy. Running the Last University is something that demands a lot of energy, so right now he’s not exactly braced for his worst nightmares despite continuing to wake up in fainter and fainter echoes of them. Right now he has no idea why he's been summoned in the middle of the night, but Rosana insisted, apparently, and as the lord of the University he has to be there for... this.

Him.

There's no name to the face but he knows it, he recognizes the pained furrow in the brow, the lank golden curls, the sun-starved brown skin covered in dirt and blood that Rosana is gingerly trying to dab away and he's just staring into nothing with those empty oceanic eyes, and it sends a flare of wrath through Ephrim, spiking in his chest and pulsing in his hand, a sickening ache. Why? How? Why now?

The sick pang deepens when both Rosana and the man turn to look at him, Rosana’s eyes widening in relief and the man’s in shock, fear, anticipation - more emotions than Ephrim wants to or cares to pick out right now. He doesn’t say anything. Neither of them do. Rosana is the one to break the silence.

“Ephrim, I - good to see you.” She makes to stand up, but the man’s eyes flick to her, wide and blue like deep ice, and he clutches at her sleeve, desperate, a ragged plea of a noise dragged out of his throat. She looks back at him, caught askance. “I won’t leave, I just need to talk to Ephrim,” she soothes firmly, and to Ephrim’s surprise it works, the man crumpling back into the chair and turning his haunted stare on the two of them, fingers digging into his arm like it’ll comfort him.

Samothes had blue eyes. Who knew if the real one did too.

“Why is he here?” is the first thing Ephrim grits out to Rosana. “What - what happened?”

Rosana wipes her hands on a cloth tucked into her waistband, shaking her head. “He hasn’t been able to tell us anything. Benjamin and his friend - Blue J? - were the ones who saw him appear about an hour ago, outside the southern gates, he showed up with a bad stab wound -” she indicates the location with her hands, and Ephrim steels himself against the urge to gag. He _knows._ “But the thing is that it disappeared, um, while we brought him here. It just... sealed itself back up.”

Ephrim blinks. “What?”

Rosana shrugs. “The wound is gone. We don’t know why. But he’s - um. Well, I can’t quite say _intact_ , but... um. Aside from his missing hand, there’s no injuries left on him.”

Great. Just great. Ephrim just wants to turn heel and go back to bed and never think about this again, about Samothes on the end of his sword, desperate and ready to dissolve his own hand for Ephrim. “Okay. Well, um, we should put him somewhere.”

“He doesn’t like being alone. Should we get him to the infirmary?”

“I - sure.” Ephrim rubs at his face wearily. Anything to get this over with sooner. “Just - I have a bad feeling about this, Rosana.” She doesn’t need to know the specifics. “Make sure there’s an eye on him, don’t let him near anyone vulnerable, alert me if he does anything - harmful. You know.”

“I have to sleep too, you know,” she says with amusement and a mild sting. “But I understand.”

“Great.” He rubs at his face, and adds, “Thank you. Thanks a lot.”

“You’re welcome.” And Ephrim takes his leave, still feeling those eyes speared into his back even after he’s out of sight.

He barely sleeps the rest of the week.


	2. Chapter 2

So Ephrim’s been avoiding him. Wouldn’t you too? Wouldn’t you avoid the man who had masqueraded as your god and toyed with your life as his own personal tool and weapon? Wouldn’t you disassociate yourself from the fake god you had been the unwitting loyal hand of? He’s perfectly justified.

He takes to taking walks at night. There’s something about the combination of relative stillness, of the darkness blanketing familiar venues and making everything unknown and new, of the quiet of the night enveloping him and allowing himself to think of himself in ways he could never articulate to anyone in the daylight, face to face. He walks, sometimes in the University, sometimes in the hodgepodge camp-town that’s sprung up and tried to assemble a modicum of order, sometimes in his underground garden, sometimes on the ramparts of the walls they’ve repaired for better defenses. He barely sees anyone on these walks, and that’s why he takes them - he doesn’t have to be accosted by people who need him to solve their problems for them, to move sky and earth for them because even as one of two heads of the University, the weight of the world gets to him sometimes and he needs to breathe.

Which is why bumping into his golden-haired nightmare on one such walk is _such_ a downer. He grits his teeth. He hadn’t seen the man in months - he was doing so good.

“Ephrim,” the man says softly, hoarsely, tense and frozen with his shoulders hunched almost up to his ears, defensive like a cornered animal. He’s pressed up against the wall as if it’ll support the weight of his fear, and Ephrim notices he’s wearing clothes that don’t fit at all, hang off his bones like they clothe a ghost. A corpse come back to life.

“ _Lord_ Ephrim,” snaps Ephrim defensively, annoyed like a dry heat licking his throat.

“Lord,” he muses, the shine of fear dimming for a second. Ephrim expected more fight out of him. “You were always destined for greater things.”

Revulsion spikes in him. “Don’t.” The traitor impostor just turns his face, unwilling to make eye contact, fidgeting with his fingers like his hangnails will save him. “Why are _you_ so scared? You look like I’m going to stab you again.”

The man actually laughs, a clipped bitter bark. “What, should I not expect it from you? You didn’t hesitate the first time. Do you usually -” He sighs heavily, clutching his arm where the wrist cuts off, leaving behind the toxic void of flesh turned Dark. The silence stretches, cold and still. “I’m sorry. I - I didn’t mean to start off like this.”

“What, like an asshole?” Ephrim can’t help himself. “Because that’s all you’ve been to me this whole time.”

The man rolls his eyes. “Ephrim, that -”

“You don’t get to use my name. You’ve been nothing but an asshole, except when you saved me from dying, but now I just wish you _hadn’t_ sometimes -”

“Ephrim.”

“- because without _you_ I probably could’ve had a life that wasn’t just moving around in the first place -”

“ _Ephrim._ ”

“I could’ve had a _home_ if it weren’t for _you_ -”

“ _That wasn’t me,_ ” he shouts right back, and Ephrim recoils. “I’m not Samothes! I can’t - I’m not my father, I _became_ Samothes but _I am not my father._ ” He sounds desperate, like he’s trying more to convince himself than to convince Ephrim. “I don’t - I still don’t remember everything, but I’m sorry I hurt you. I - you reminded me of me.” Ephrim watches, crawling with cold fire as he deflates. “When I saw you you just looked - the way I used to - so I tried to do something but I wasn’t him and I wasn’t me, I was trapped in my own head with him and he just kept yelling at me and it hurt - I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry please, I tried he has to know I tried -”

“You _did this to me_ .” Ephrim yanks off his glove and shoves his Darkened hand in his face, and the man shies away as if burned. “Samothes or not, whoever you are, you did this to me and now I’m _dying_ and there’s nothing I can do about it. _You_ did this. You made me serve a false god and lied to me my whole life and you’re the reason I’m dying. Don’t tell me it wasn’t you!”

He won’t look at Ephrim. He holds himself precariously still, trembling, and Ephrim can’t stand it. “Say _something_. Anything.” The silence is deafening, and his nerves are fraying.

“My name is Maelgwyn,” he says at last, tiny, removed.

“Maelgwyn,” Ephrim repeats, the name heavy on his tongue. Maelgwyn looks younger than him, he realizes vaguely, but that must just be a side effect of whatever the gods had going on with regards to time and age. He wants to stay mad at him. He wants his due, but he can’t stop seeing echoes of himself in this lost, broken man with his strings cut loose. He can’t help but feel like he’s staring at himself.

 _I sensed an origin similar to mine,_ the impostor says in his mind. _I am you and you are mine._

Never mind. Ephrim wants to vomit.

Maelgwyn is talking into the silence. “I thought I was doing the right thing. I - I was told it was the right thing to do, to hold back the Heat and the Dark. To feel regret over killing my father -” His voice breaks, thin, sharp, and brittle, but he recovers. “Regret didn’t save me. I tried so hard, and then you came along and I thought you could do what I couldn’t, because I saw you in me -” _I sensed an origin similar to mine,_ the same intonation, the same deep ache behind it.

“You don’t know me,” Ephrim snaps, sick.

“What, you think you’re the only person on Hieron who’s killed him?” Ephrim isn’t ready for the acid retort. “You think you’re the only one who’s killed your god? The most important man in your life?” He takes a step forward, and Ephrim takes a step back. “I was supposed to _be_ the answer. I was supposed to hold back the Heat and the Dark. Everyone was looking to me for the answer and I fucked it up and now we’re here because I was told _killing my own father_ would be the solution and I believed them.” There’s a bitter fire in his eyes now. Ephrim hates that look on him. “I’m sorry. Believe me, _please._ I am. But in the grand scheme of things? How much longer does Hieron have? What are we compared to the rest of the continent? What do we matter?” He gestures frustratedly, getting up and close as he talks. “Just because I loved you doesn’t mean killing _me_ makes you special -”

Ephrim reacts before he knows it - he decks Maelgwyn in the face. Maelgwyn’s head snaps away with the blow, and Ephrim hears a surprised huff escape him as he stumbles.

“Shut up,” Ephrim snarls, flame and fury licking every inch of his skin and begging to escape, to incinerate, to destroy anything that threatens him. His Darkened arm throbs unpleasantly, the pulse searing through his arm and squeezing his chest. “Just - shut up! Shut the fuck up!” Maelgwyn turns baleful eyes on him, nursing his cheek. “We’re not alone in this world, Ephrim.”

“Shut up. _You don’t get to tell me what to do._ ” Ephrim thrusts his Darkened hand into the space between them again, splayed for Maelgwyn to see. “You can’t say you didn’t do this to me. You’re the reason I’m dying and that matters to _me._ If you don’t have any answers to _that,_ I don’t want to fucking see you around.”

After a moment, Maelgwyn smiles at him, a vague bitter spark that disappears into ice, and steps away. “Don’t stab me in the back,” he quips as he turns to leave, shoulders still tight against the wall. “You have such a talent for doing things head-on.”

Ephrim, exhausted, feels the faint throb in his knuckles as he watches Maelgwyn leave. And as always, his Darkened hand to match Maelgwyn’s pulses, a sickening cold pain that counts down his days.


	3. Chapter 3

“So we meet again,” Maelgwyn quips dryly, and Ephrim rolls his eyes, fighting the urge to back out immediately. They’re in a small room in a watchtower several weeks after their last encounter, apparently having had the same idea to come up and watch the night sky in a fit of insomnia. It’s cold, a damp chill that threatens to seep into his bones - the dry season they think of as spring and summer is far off, and he longs to feel the warmth of a real sun, preferably not divine. “How’s it been?”

Ephrim is a little taken aback as he sits down warily on a crate. He’s been replaying Maelgwyn’s words in his head, and doesn’t quite know how he feels about him right now. “What, not going to say something rude to me?”

“Do you want me to?” Maelgwyn looks out at the stars dotting the sky. “I’ve already died twice. I’m probably going to die for good one more time.” He raises his Darkened hand, not as far progressed as Ephrim’s, but still creeping down his wrist, counting down inch by ominous inch. “You left your mark on me, Ephrim. I’m fine with that. I’ve lived way too long.” He sighs heavily, still looking out at the stars. “There’s nothing I can do about any of that.”

Ephrim barks a quiet laugh. “What, not going to try to go earlier?”

Maelgwyn laughs at that, actually, genuinely amused for reasons Ephrim can’t fathom. “Well, I figured since I have this opportunity where no one _wants_ anything from me, I’d better use it. I’ve been a tool my whole life, Ephrim, you of all people would know how it feels to no longer be a sword in someone’s hand.” Ephrim’s gut seizes painfully at that - he hates the idea of being known by Maelgwyn, but it _does_ ring semi-true.

In the silence, a soft blanket over them, Maelgwyn continues to talk. “For the first time no one has a purpose or expectations for me. And it’s new, it’s honestly scary, but I’ve wanted this my whole life, I think? Like, I never wanted to _be_ my father. I just want to be myself. And now I have the rest of this life to figure out what to do with myself. So thanks.” The final word falls flat and sharp from his mouth, and don’t quite speak to the tranquil expression on his face.

“What, do you think I shouldn’t have killed you?” Ephrim asks, genuinely wondering but put bluntly.

Maelgwyn laughs quietly, surprised. “ _Ephrim_.” He turns to look at Ephrim, a bittersweet smile playing on his lips. “Ephrim, you _saved_ me.”

Ephrim blinks. “What?”

“You saved me from being Samothes,” Maelgwyn elaborates, resting his cheek against his knuckles, a faraway look in his eyes. “I’ve never gotten to be _Maelgwyn._ I’ve always been Confidence Alive, or - or the Dark Sun - and I’m sorry for that too - I’ve never known not being a sword. I’ve never - you know? Like, who am I without my fathers hanging over my head? Who am I now that I don’t have anyone to fail? I don’t know. I don’t know yet.”

Ephrim can’t quite align the pieces of what Maelgwyn’s musing to him with what he knows about the gods. It feels so foreign to conceptualize this man not as a destroyed tyrant, but as the boy soldier he’s describing to Ephrim, looking up to superiors Ephrim has never known. Falling from grace never given by superiors Ephrim’s never known.

“Surely you know how it feels,” Maelgwyn says softly, watching him for something Ephrim can’t see in himself, a little reserved now.

“... Yeah.” A prince, a god’s hand, too many homes and voyages and people looking at him with visions in their eyes that they’ve built over the reality of him and won’t look past to truly see him. “I’ve... I’ve had a bit of time to be more than -” He wants to say _more than you,_ but he doesn’t want Maelgwyn to get all sour on him. Not when he understands this. “More than Samothes’ hand. But I’d rather be my own person and busting my ass for it than being someone’s tool for the rest of my life. I’m never letting someone toy with my life at their whim ever again.” He’s still not quite sure how _much_ he wants Maelgwyn to understand him.

Maelgwyn smiles, perhaps wistfully. “That’s good. It really is.”

Ephrim leans back, and the moons bathe his vision in cool light, and he wonders if the strange taste in his mouth is because he’s disclosing his struggles to the man who wrecked his life. It’s a circle, a cycle, Maelgwyn and Samothes and Ephrim, all at odds with each other despite the underlying connections.

“You should go to sleep,” Maelgwyn says, still watching him and seeing something more. “You’re looking tired.”

Ephrim yawns, suddenly feeling it upon him now that Maelgwyn’s made him aware of it. “... You’re right.”

“Take care of yourself,” Maelgwyn murmurs. “People are still looking to you and your work isn’t done.”

Ephrim expects to feel more than the mild jerk of irritation subsumed by bone-deep exhaustion and small bloom of warmth in his chest, hearing these words of care. But he doesn’t. “I... sure.” He isn’t quite ready to extend that hand and wish Maelgwyn goodnight. He’s not ready to be that open yet.

The moon follows in the windows, and Ephrim glances at it as he makes his way to bed, silently asking it for answers. It doesn’t have any, and when he goes to sleep, blanketed in its glow that illuminates the Nothing in his hand, he doesn’t either.


	4. Chapter 4

Progress isn’t linear. Recovery never has a straight trajectory, and some days Ephrim finds himself drowning, the fragile hull of his mind capsizing and leaving him to flounder, panicking and gasping for breath even though he has all the air in the world.

He can’t leave his room - he hears people outside, murmuring, knows that the show must go on and he is the keystone in this precarious structure he maintains for others but he cannot find it within himself today. He is fighting his own terror and the fear of not being good enough, not having the answers, being unmoored and being fake and transparent and a hollowed-out empty shell of a person and thus there is no room to be strong for others. He can’t even be strong for himself.

As he sprints through these thoughts, the door opens softly, and the click pierces his heart. The other figures go quiet, and he can hear retreating shuffles.

“Ephrim?” Maelgwyn peeks around the door, and Ephrim almost growls with annoyance. In his catastrophizing, he feels like Maelgwyn’s ulterior motives are finally going to shine through, and Ephrim’s finally going to have his trajectory cut short for once and for all.

“Go away,” hisses Ephrim through gritted teeth, clutching his arm so hard he thinks he’ll bruise. “You’re the last person I want to see.”

Maelgwyn does not go away. He simply closes the door slightly, a crack of light spilling through, and sits down a fair distance away from Ephrim. _What does he want?_ screams Ephrim’s brain. _Why now?_ The only sounds he can process are the turmoil of his inner machinery, the vast emptiness around them, the screaming of his constricting terror. Then -

“Samothes put me in charge of his army when I got to Marielda.” He can barely see Maelgwyn in the darkness, but he can hear his voice, quiet but clear. “It was my part to play. My father - Samot and I were trying to make him see that the war was a tragedy. So I became his general.” Ephrim strains to listen over the hammering of his heart, his billowing lungs. “I - I don’t know what it was like to be around me when I was Samothes, but it was _awful_ being his son _and_ his general. I just wanted him to be proud, I just wanted to do the right thing and not mess up - it would choke me. The need to do right. And I could never - he always wanted more. He always thought I wasn’t enough. And I felt like I was drowning day by day.”

Ephrim’s eyes have adjusted. Maelgwyn isn’t looking at him, but he knows the words are for him. He feels sick, partially from his struggles and partially from Maelgwyn reaching out in such a way when he’s so vulnerable, but he clings to the words to make some kind of sense in this chaotic swirl.

“I failed him. Of course I failed him.” Maelgwyn’s voice is barely above a whisper at that, eyes closed as he admits his sin. “Fifteen years is a long time to sit with yourself.” Is he _trying_ to tell Ephrim the years he’s spent grappling with his own faith and mortality don’t matter?

“And being corporeal again might’ve been the worst part of being free - it’s so _excruciating_ to suddenly be a person again after you’ve spent all that time with nothing but your own shortcomings. But... Castille helped. She helped a lot.” His voice takes on a tender quality Ephrim’s never quite heard before from him, suffused with wistful sorrow. “I guess you don’t know who she is, right? I, um, she was a mage, for my father, Samot - and Samothes wanted me to kill her so I tried -”

Ephrim almost laughs. Were all of Maelgwyn’s relationships centered around killing and dying at each other’s hands?

“She was still there when I got free, and a lot had changed by then. And she had too. But she was one of the last people who I’d known before I - was sealed away - and I hated who she’d been but she -” His voice breaks, thick and wobbly. “She was my friend when I didn’t recognize anybody or anything. And I really needed one then.” Ephrim watches him take a shaky breath, blinking the tears away. “She - I used to have attacks like the ones you’re having now. I - I still do. She’d sit with me, and talk, and I just needed someone there with me, so I could stop feeling so _caught_ all the time.” He smiles, bittersweet. “I miss her.”

Ephrim studies him, not to understand but to observe, heart still a hammer but not as frantic as before. His hands feel weak, and his lungs can’t quite get their fill, but he isn’t quite drowning anymore.

After an eternity, the question still begs asking. “Why are you doing this?” he rasps, hugging his knees to his chest.

Maelgwyn’s eyes are sad. “I was born to save everyone,” he says, in a way where Ephrim can’t tell whether he’s joking or not.

“... What happened to Castille?”

Maelgwyn sighs, with the weight of Hieron. “I... after I... killed him, I...” He gestures, struggling with words and memories and how to tell this story that happened millennia ago. “She stayed with me in the forge. She tried. I don’t know exactly what happened, but she just - faded. It was like the Dark washed over her in waves and took with every inch it got from her. One day she was just - she was just a statue.” His voice is streaked with pain and longing. “And I think the worst part was that I wasn’t even upset. I knew it would happen, but I didn’t feel anything.” He sighs again, a self-rebuke of regret. Ephrim feels like he should offer condolences, but another part of him doesn’t know if he’d truly mean it. “And then it was just me and him.”

The University continues to move around them, sounds outside the door regular and familiar. Neither of them moves - Ephrim can’t quite bring himself to look at Maelgwyn either after that, not out of disgust or horror but because he can’t possibly grapple with the enormity of Maelgwyn’s grief while still dealing with his own.

After an eternity, there’s a knock on the door, still half-ajar. “Lord Ephrim?” It’s Highwater. “Lord Ephrim, if you’re in there - if I could come in -”

“Yeah,” Ephrim croaks, unfurling a little. Maelgwyn has relaxed, ankles loosely crossed as he slumps on the floor with Ephrim. “Yes, Highwater, what’s up?”

The cobbin peeks around the door, washing the vicinity with light. “Er, Corsica’s looking for you. Something about the, um - Lem, Fero, and Hella are going to be back soon? And some other things.”

Ephrim heaves a sigh, sloughing off the weight that pins him to this moment. “Okay, tell her I’ll be in the meeting room in ten minutes.”

“Yessir.”

Maelgwyn looks up at him as he gets up. “Who are those?” His face is less sharp than it was when he returned from the dead.

Ephrim pauses, studying him. Finally, he offers him his hand. “They’re my friends. You - Samothes asked for Fero, when I died.” He doesn’t know whether to mention where they’ve gone. Oh, fuck it. “They went to the moon to see if the Mistral had any - tips or anything on stopping the Heat and the Dark. Or the Spring. Maybe you’ll get to meet them.”

Maelgwyn accepts the proffered hand, maybe a little guiltily. “My aunt made the moons,” he says, almost to himself.

Ephrim blinks. “Huh?”

Maelgwyn grins, not quite hitting all the points. “Well, both of them did. Severea and Galenica are - my family. It gets kind of complicated.” He opens the door, ushering Ephrim out of the room. “Maybe later I’ll have time to tell you about it.”

“Maybe,” Ephrim echoes, stepping into the bright hallway. He lingers, uncertain. “... Thanks. For that.”

Maelgwyn’s eyes turn bittersweet soft. “You’re welcome.”

They stare at each other perhaps a breath too long. Then Ephrim turns and walks away.

Maelgwyn is painfully shy meeting the returning party, nothing like the meager confidence Ephrim’s witnessed so far. He’s awkward around Lem and Fero, not quite sure how he fits with them, but interestingly, he and Hella become fast friends. Neither of them can quite explain to Ephrim what they gain from each other, but at least they’re not at each others’ throats. Ephrim hears mention of an Adelaide, Queen of Death, from them both, and it makes him pinch the bridge of his nose wearily. He’s had enough of monarchs for a little while, he thinks. He’ll cross that bridge when he gets to it.


End file.
